Why Should I Use Cloth Diapers?

One of my favorite classes to teach in my teaching career wasn’t physical science, although I really loved it, but was a Cloth Diapering 101 class. Mostly I enjoyed the random questions the dad would ask as they always kept me on my toes. Right now I’ve taken a break from teaching to home school my oldest, but I still have lots of cloth diapering wisdom since I have had three children in cloth diapers over a span of six years and counting!

I initially cloth diapered to save money. Yes, saving the planet was good as well, but diaper are expensive! One of my friends kept track of their first year of diapers, how many of each size and the cost of it all. They spent between $1,600-$1,800 in diapers, wipes and such products alone! That’s a lot of money!

First reason to cloth diaper: It will save you money. Build a stash and it should cost between $200-800 TOTAL. EVER. The end. Unless you get bored with your patterns and colors and want to buy more. Which will probably happen. Fluff is cute. Your decision.

When I began cloth diapering my second child, I learned about the harmful bleaching processes that go into disposable diapers. Around that time is also when a popular disposable company had come out with some sort of new absorbent lining that actually burned some babies’ bottoms, including the child of a friend of mine. Feminine products go through similar manufacturing processes as disposable diapers and I started hearing testimonies from women who switched to mama cloth or diva cups. This switch showed their PMS symptoms diminishing or even disappearing. All of those things combined led me to my second reason…

Second reason to cloth diaper: The less chemicals near your baby the better. I’m not saying that using any disposables is going to for sure hurt your baby, (I use them mixed in with cloth) but the more you know about what touches your baby’s skin the better. CDs can be made out of synthetic or natural materials and the detergents that you wash them in are usually very mild and void of phosphates. That means that using cloth equals less chemical exposure.

That brings me to my last point… Do you know how much gasoline and other resources go into making and transporting disposable diapers? A lot. Most, if not all, disposable diapers come from overseas. Yes, a lot of cloth ones do as well, but in theory one stash full could be one trip. With disposables, that trip is repeated over and over again for 2-3 years!

Third reason to cloth diaper: Cutting down on your carbon footprint is very important. I have to admit, this wasn’t at the top of my list and still isn’t my biggest concern, but it’s true. Even all of the washing of cloth diapers cannot stack up to all the waste from the amount of disposable diapers one child would wear during the course of his or her babyhood.

There are more reasons why I use cloth diapers, but these seemed to be the most popular reasons I heard when I’d ask my CD 101 participants why they wanted to learn more about cloth diapering. These are the reasons they were seeking out cloth.

I’m a homeschooling mom to three little ones ages six, three and almost one! Former teacher turned entrepreneur, I still love to share what I’ve learned, especially with other moms. You can see some of my business ventures at My Consign DFW.

1 thought on “Why Should I Use Cloth Diapers?”

if you live in a rural area like we do, you can combine 1 and 3 because you have to take your own trash to the dump and pay by weight…. pee is heavy! so worth cloth diapering for that reason alone. we go to the dump maybe once every 3 weeks since most paper gets burned and everything else gets composted!